Greetings. This is my first time posting here. I've recently installed Foobar2000 for its .aiff ripping capabilities. Following my first rip, I attempted to update missing information in each track's properties, but got the following message:

Could not update tags (Tagging of this file format is not supported)

My question - Is there a way to update tag info for .aiff files in Foobar2000? If not, is there another lossless format that foobar rips to that will allow tags to be updated? Is there another program that will rip to .aiff that will do this?

is there another lossless format that foobar rips to that will allow tags to be updated?

AIFF is an uncompressed format, and while the term lossless is technically correct, here it usually refers to losslessly compressed formats. As Porcus implied, these offer many advantages over uncompressed formats.

I think that tagging of AIFF should be implemented. First - WAVEs can be tagged with foobar - then why not AIFFs? Second - Beatport sells tagged AIFFs (even with artwork embedded) but currently those tags can not be even viewed, whis is uncomfortable.

(Sorry for quoting old post.) Due to hardware/firmware limitations, some people are stuck with AIFF. E.g., Pioneer's line of CDJ players, a standard in the DJ booth, only supports WAV, AIFF, AAC, and MP3. No ALAC or FLAC. So, in that scenario, AIFF is best among the limited choices you've got (AIFF >> WAV due to better metadata support).

Hmm...I don't know to much about inner dependencies between various functions in foobar - but maybe it is possible to write 3rd party plugin which will add metadata support for AIFF? Something like "foo_aiff_tag" - plugin that will just let us read metadata from aiffs and display it via foobar's Propertied Dialog and Album Art Viewer ? And edit them of course. I don't know weather external plugin is able to use that functionalities of foobar's core, but if not maybe it is possible to create independent Properties Dialog assigned to AIFFs only (with metadata and album art displayed) as function in proposed plugin? I am not a programmer - I am asking someone with programming skills if he could do this... Dear programmers, please treat it as plug-in request.

It sounds bit like there was no reason to implement better AIFF support in foobar because it is worse alternative in comparison with FLAC, WV etc. There's another strong reason for implementing AIFF metadata support. And the fact that AIFF isn't the best format to store music on PC (as file size matters) supports this reason. When I buy music on Beatport I choose AIFF - because it's lossless PCM and it (potentially) contains metadata. But my goal is always to convert it to FLAC (using foobar). When I buy WAV then after conversion I always have to manually tag FLACs using external sources like Discogs or webshop. Currently the same happens when I convert to FLAC from AIFF. But if at least reading of AIFF tags would be supported, then converting to FLAC with foobar will be just perfect - the only thing that will be missing in resulting FLACs will be album art. All other things - artists, albums, labels, dates, genres, urls - all will be preserved. And that's strong convenience. That's the only functionality that I really miss in my long time favourite music player.

I also use beatport for my for my fix of high quality tunes. my preferred formats are flac and mp3, but beatport only offer aiff wav and mp3.

so if i want lossless quality i have to get the aiff to get all the metadata and cover art which is of a good standard.unfortunately foobar doesnt read it and who wants to be without tags?

the best workaround i have found so far is to use dbpoweramp to convert to either mp3 or flac. it copies all the tags and art. xrecodeII doesnt seem to copy all the tags and i had to change the tagging standard after in foobar.

Its now got me thinking if theres a free commandline program/script that you can run from foobar to convert externally to foobar to retain the tags and art?

Without wanting to impede solutions for fb2k, I have to say that Beatport only offering uncompressed lossless audio are kinda shooting themselves in the foot, from a perspective of bandwidth if nothing else. I suppose it’s to accommodate those who neither have nor are willing to set up a player besides WMP or iTunes since neither of those share support for any one lossless compression format. Understandable, but still far from ideal. It would probably be better for them in the long run to at least offer the option of uncompressed vs. compressed, like Soundcloud/Bandcamp, so that users who are willing/capable to play the latter will consume less bandwidth from them.

The best option will be to have foobar 3rd party/built-in component which is able to read/write metadata to AIFF files . I can't understand only one thing about it - why no one can simply say "no, it won't be supported, never"? Then I will never ask about it again, as it would be simple and clear.

In case of lossless electronic music: there's alternative for Beatport. It's Juno/Junodownload. Lossless files from them are generally more expensive, compared to Beatport, but when you finish payment, you got option to download all lossless files as FLAC. And FLAC files contain all metedata - front cover, artists, titles, albums, cat# nums, sometimes ISRCs, publishers, authors. Additionally you can find there some free tracks and free releases. Loads more than on Beatport.